The tales, legends and observations of a man who wakes up every morning expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

This post remains untitled

A
collection of thoughts too long for twitter (feel free to follow me
@lukermartin, or if you feel financially obligated, I accept cash and checks)
but too short for their own blog entry.

Lemonade
is for right after you’ve finished mowing the lawn. Beer is for the ballgame.
But when is Root Beer time. Not Root Beer Floats, but just root beer? When’s
the last time you wanted a beverage and thought to yourself “you know, I could
really go for a root beer right about now?” Never. No one says that. Yet Root Beer
continues to be sold at what I can only assume is a profitable pace. Are there
that many people drinking it that I’m not aware of or is there a massive Root
Beer Float industry that I’ve totally missed?

Twitter
makes live television infinitely better, especially sports. The sense of global
community that takes place when everyone’s commenting on a game is unmatched.
It’s the equivalent of a digital sports bar where the only things being said
are either observations on the game or jokes made about the game or its
participants (including broadcasters). It’s what you’d do with your friends if
you were all in one place watching the game together. Only now you don’t have
to be in the same place. Or, in the event your wife watches something like “The
Bachelor,” you can make all the sarcastic comments about how terrible the show
is and mock the contestants on Twitter while still spending quality time with
your wife without her getting mad at you for making fun of the one show she
really likes and she knows it’s trash tv but she likes to turn her mind off
once a week and just enjoy the trash. Not that I’ve ever done that, mind you,
but one could, if they were so inclined. While DVRs may have made television
more convenient, Twitter has made it more enjoyable.

Arguing
about sports is, for the most part, more enjoyable than watching the games
themselves. Assuming you’re talking to someone who also gets that it’s just
sports and is supposed to be fun, there’s nothing better* than arguing whether
Babe Ruth would have been a great player in today’s game (he wouldn’t) or if
Tim Tebow is a good quarterback (he isn’t) or if the blue team will beat the
green team during halftime of a college football game when they let the local
recreation league teams play for 10 minutes as a way of forcing the parents to
buy tickets they wouldn’t otherwise have bought because who is going to tell
their kid they can’t play on the same field as their local sports heroes when
the rest of their team gets to play? (the blue team always wins.)

*There are, in fact, a few things better.
Actually, many, many things better.

What
Jon Stewart does on The Daily Show is
absolutely amazing. The ability to take serious issues and mock them in such a
way that you’re both laughing and thinking is astounding. It also makes me
realize just how very bad the traditional news media is at informing the
public. Then I just remind myself that news organizations are in the business
of making money and are simply catering to their customers who just want their
preconceived notions reinforced by the pretty lady on the TeeVee. Watching CNN,
FOX News or MSNBC because you want to be informed is like drinking root beer
because you want to get drunk. No matter how hard you try, it’s not going to
happen.